For now, I can’t imagine doing any significant amount of typing on this tiny folding keyboard. However, I’m trying to see how much of my computer use can be shifted to my tablet. The objective is some nebulous sense of need to be as mobile as possible.
It’s no secret that the PC as a device is already obsolete for most people, and the laptop isn’t far behind. We’ll still see netbooks for awhile, but for personal use, mobility is a major element in the cultural shift currently under way. Most of the people I see daily access the Internet through their smartphone. I’m not ready to go there yet.
However, my own personal use for computers in general is fading fast. A decade ago I had my face in the flickering glow of the screen almost the entirety of my waking hours. Now it’s down to a few hours each day. I doubt this part of my ministry will end soon, but my life and the focus of my attention is moving away from the virtual world.
That is, instead of being a separate thing, it merges into the background as something almost taken for granted as a public utility. I realize that’s a poor metaphor, but most of my readers are likely to understand how this thing has become so ubiquitous that, even the gaps in service availability is merely a fact of life. The point is that it is no longer a central element in my thinking, and becoming less so. Whether the direction we are going as a society is any better is another question, but to have lived such a computer-geek existence was too close to religion for me. That was a hindrance to my ministry.
So for that part of it, I rejoice. It’s time to move into a different way of life.
As part of my own attempt to spend less time in the light of the glowing rectangle I’ve been writing on paper, old school. What a difference it makes to my thinking! It slows me down while it frees up my thinking. I suppose it engages a different part of the brain.
My husband uses his Android quite a bit – his posture suffers for it, and his attention span, too. I can’t abide the damn thing. I can feel it training my brain in ways that make me uneasy.
I suspect a lot of it is use pattern. Posture is just a matter of habit, because I’m pretty careful about mine. Mostly my tablet is for communications and reading. I may test it as music player later, but only worship music. The whole point for me is enhancing ministry and perhaps a sanity escape in emergencies. This is the easiest way to keep things at hand. I am quite capable of leaving it at home.